Currently Browsing Conversions

While it’s obvious that ad position effects cost, does it effect conversion rate? For example, does the top position AdWords ad get a higher percentage of clicks turning into conversions than an ad further down the page? Google has conducted studies and developed numerical models that indicate that if such a relationship exists, it is […]

We aren’t designers, but we sure like good design. Not just pretty design. We like design that helps our clients sell more stuff, join their organization, download materials, subscribe to newsletters…, to respond to their call-to-action. Whereas our focus with search marketing is to increase the size of the sales funnel’s opening, user experience design […]

A long time ago, we wrote briefly about how higher Click-Through-Rate (CTR) values aren’t always desirable, and our clients often ask how to best interpret the significance of CTR. CTR is literally defined as the percentage of people who viewed an ad that clicked on it. For example, if an ad is shown 100 times […]

The Google Retail Advertising Blog recently posted sales cycle statistics for a variety of consumer products. At the low end, shoppers took an average of 7 days to purchase pet supplies, while they took 16 days for electronics. The data did not include purchases larger than home appliances like cars or homes which presumably take […]

You can drive all the traffic in the world to your website, but it’s a waste the visitors don’t convert. Form design is very often a significant contributor to poor conversion rates. While Key Principles and Specific Recommendations that follow are generally written for forms that solicit contact information from potential customers, they can also […]

When you create online advertising of any kind, it is possible to “tag” the ads in a way that website analytics software like Google Analytics and WebTrends can provide additional information about these traffic sources. For example, tagging can make it possible to tell exactly which ad among several provides the most online purchases or […]

Over the years we have managed a lot of pay-per-click campaigns for a variety of clients. Some of them have a thorough understanding of conversions, while there are still a lot that don’t. It is still surprising to find companies that only measure the success or failure of their AdWords campaigns (or less often Yahoo! […]

Google Analytics now can track activity in Flash. This means that Flash sites and components can be built in such a way as to provide visibility into user behavior. The Google Analytics Tracking for Adobe Flash component must be incorporated into your Flash content, thus you will need to make changes to your files, not […]

“We know we’re doing well because our web statistics tell us that we’re getting a lot of traffic from searches on beige widgets.” What’s wrong with this statement? The speaker is focusing on their successes. This is a good strategy for ego reinforcement, but it’s a terrible way to find business opportunities. The biggest potential […]

We recently wrote about Google Analytics’ advanced segments functionality. They are also working on Custom Reports features that allow you to quickly build your own tools for analyzing your profiles. The Custom Reports section allows you to use almost any parameter available in Google Analytics. Reports consist of data table and associated charts. The charts […]